Sunday, November 16, 2003

Feeling absolutely knackered this evening. Probably has something to do with being dragged out of bed at some unholy hour (9am) this morning by my niece and then spending a couple of hours helping my brother and my Dad fill in the pit in the garage.

(If you’re wondering why there was a pit in the garage, it was one of Dad’s ‘smart’ ideas when he built the extension. He intended to use it to work on the car, but it had a foot and a half of water in the bottom from day one, so was utterly useless.)

I think that was the last thing to be done before we move, apart from packing, obviously. People always say that it takes ages to buy and sell a house, but it’s only been four weeks and contracts have already been signed. They should be exchanged soon, and we’ll be moving before Christmas, I suspect around mid-December.

I have to admit, I’ve done a complete u-turn on the whole concept of moving house. Yes, technically this is the house I grew up in, and it will be strange to leave it, but to be honest, it’s not the house I grew up in anymore at all. When I was at school we started putting an extension on the house, and although it took years before the floors were in and the space useable, the house I grew up in vanished in 87 when we built over the potato patch.

Consequently, I’m not as emotionally attached to this place as I thought I would be, and I’ve started to see moving house as a really very good idea.

At the moment, as I believe I may have mentioned, we live in the very picturesque Arseendofnowhere. This, for example, is the view I see from my desk when I peer over the top of my monitor. Nice, huh?

However pretty the view is, though, there’s still nothing here but a road, some houses, a post box and a telephone box. The place we’re moving to is a fast-growing village, with such luxuries as shops, a library, banks, and pizza delivery.

😀

Other benefits are that I’ll be able to take the bike out without risking life and limb (the road here is narrow, twisty and plays host to countless speeding maniacs), if the bungalow gets too small I can escape to my brother’s or the library, and my parents have friends in the village so that’s fairly handy too.

There will also be buses. There haven’t been buses from here to… well, anywhere at all in years. There used to be one that went into Wimborne on a Friday, but if you missed the bus home, which went only an hour and a half after you’d arrived, you’d have to wait a week for the next one.

Once we’ve moved I’ll actually be able to catch buses to the bustling metropolises (metropoli?) of Ringwood, Salisbury, Poole or Bournemouth. Although why I would want to go to either Poole or Bournemouth is anyone’s guess. I’ve spent most of my life avoiding them.

Anyway, so yes, I’m a convert. Moving house is a good idea. Roll on December!

(Of course, I am secretly hoping that I’ll have got a job and moved up north by then anyway.)

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